If Necessary Alone
by hobbitfoot
Summary: All the lights go out in London and Sherlock, John and Mrs Hudson set out to retrieve Lestrade from a conference in Coventry. But electronics and phones and cars don't work anymore. Sort of like Mad Max but without the leather chaps. Takes place before any of the events of The Reichenbach Fall have occurred. Rating for violence, language, no sex.
1. The Sun's Zooming In

**Author's Note:** For this story, I'm going to use the same type of point of view as in A Song of Ice and Fire. Each section will have a character's name at the beginning, and that section of the story will be from that character's point of view. Rating is for violence and all sorts of bad language. No sex will be portrayed, though.

- o - o - o -

If Necessary Alone

Chapter 1: The Sun's Zooming In

**John**

"John. John, wake up; we've had another Carrington event."

"What? What time is it, Sherlock? Who's Carrington?" Some light was coming in John's bedroom window, so it must've been fairly early in the morning.

"It's about half past five. Carrington was an astronomer. He recorded a very large solar flare in 1859 which affected most of Earth, and caused so much induced current in the telegraph system that telegrams could be sent for several hours without being hooked up to a power source. It also caused auroras as far south as Hawaii."

"But you don't know anything about astronomy. And what do you mean, there's been another one?" John sat up and rubbed his face. His flatmate was fully dressed and leaning over the foot of John's bed. The dim light coming in from outside seemed a little strange, but what did auroras and telegrams have to do with him? What was going on?

"The power is out, our phones have stopped working, and our laptops have stopped working. I was alerted to the situation when I smelled my laptop battery burning. In view of the lack of seismic disturbances, it is clearly a natural event rather than a nuclear EMP attack. It will be about four hours until the riots start, so we have to get Mrs Hudson to Dr Collins's house. Come on. Pack up your gun, all your ammunition, and any medical supplies you have. We might be gone for quite some time." Sherlock whirled around and flounced out of the room and down the stairs.

John hopped out of bed and began to dress. He wasn't quite sure what was going on yet, but he was a military man, and was used to moving fast at a moment's notice. John didn't doubt that his detective flatmate had some method of estimating when riots would start, and John was certainly in favor of keeping Mrs Hudson safe, but why were they all three leaving Baker Street? Wouldn't it just be better for their elderly landlady to stay where she was? John's sister Harry lived at the outskirts of Greater London. John felt a little nervous for her safety. He wondered if Sherlock also had an estimate of how far the riots would spread.

John dragged his camouflage backpack out from under his bed, brushed it off, and started emptying out his dresser. He picked up his phone. It was completely black and wouldn't turn on even for a second. He set it off to the side on top of his desk, along with his iPod and his chargers. Were all his electronics really permanently broken? His watch had stopped at 0340 hours. His medic's bag didn't have too many electrical devices in it, just the thermometer, but he still had his old alcohol thermometer from school for some reason. He quickly sorted the essentials from the non-essentials.

John was certainly used to being woken up at all hours by Sherlock in order to hunt down clues or criminals, but that morning seemed different. When John tagged along on Sherlock's escapades, they were rarely away from home for more than a few hours, not to mention days. John wondered who this Dr Collins was supposed to be. Apparently he lived less than a four-hour walk from Baker Street, and was presumably not a criminal, or at least, not an especially dangerous criminal if Sherlock and John would be bringing Mrs Hudson to him.

John shouldered his pack and looked around the room. He was dressed, he had now packed clothes for all weather conditions, and he had his medical kit and his gun and all his ammo. He felt slightly alarmed leaving his phone behind, but he had lived without it before. He hadn't even had a mobile phone until he got out of the Army. John wondered how long they would be gone. He loved this flat. He loved the City. He couldn't picture Tower Bridge and Piccadilly Circus unlit that night or any night. He took a deep breath and headed down the stairs.

John came into the kitchen. Sherlock was muttering softly to himself and pulling bottles out from under the kitchen sink and putting them into a black backpack. John set down his own pack, opened it up again and started emptying out the tea cabinet into his pack. "Why are you doing that?" Sherlock said, pausing to stare at him.

"Well, if the power is out forever, we can't tell India to ship us a few more boatloads of tea, can we?"

Sherlock looked a little surprised. "Maybe we should rob Twinings on our way out of town, then. Hmm." He looked thoughtful as he wedged a bottle of bleach down into the black backpack.

John felt a little more awake now, and the implications of the Carrington event were starting to sink in. John supposed it would possible to build sailing ships, sail them to India, trade for tea and sail back, but that might take some time. He wondered if the Suez Canal needed electricity to work. Probably. "How far does this Carrington event extend?"

"I'd say all of England and Wales, and at least parts of France, Ireland, and Scotland."

John puffed out a breath. "Where are we going?"

"We're going to Dr Collins's house. I already informed you of this."

"Well, who's Dr Collins, then?"

"He's the assistant chair of medical physics at St Bart's. He'll have one of the few houses in London with the lights still on. He can also rig us up a car that will run."

"Ah. That would be useful. Won't Mycroft still have the lights on?"

"Not at his personal residence. And he'll be so busy after this that he'll barely be home for weeks, at least. I've left him a message if he comes by, though." He waved his hand towards the windows. On the wall between the front windows of the sitting room, Sherlock had chalked 'fleche.'

"'Fleche'? Well, I don't see how your brother could fail to understand _that._"

"Of course he'll understand it. We're going to head towards Coventry to intercept Lestrade. But my hope is that Moriarty might not understand it when he inspects our flat."

John took a deep breath and let it out. "How does 'fleche' signify Coventry, and why would Mycroft understand it when Moriarty wouldn't?"

"Mycroft and I once discussed how hideous the fleche on top of the new Coventry Cathedral was. A 'fleche' is also a move in fencing, and Moriarty knows I am a fencer. Additionally, it is French for 'arrow', so that might mislead him as well. Both Mycroft and Moriarty would know that the intelligent part of the Met is up at Coventry for a conference, but Moriarty would assume I would stay in London out of curiosity, and Mycroft would know I would assist Lestrade and his underlings in returning to London, so that I can get back to solving cases as soon as possible. And don't ask me to demonstrate a fleche; there's not enough room in here."

"Right. Good. When is Moriarty coming here?"

"Oh, not till nightfall, probably. He's going to wait until something nearby is on fire. It's more dramatic that way."

"Right, okay."

At that moment, Mrs Hudson came into the kitchen. "Hello, John. Sherlock, I'm packed, but I'm not sure how far I can carry my bag."

"That's alright, Mrs Hudson, John will carry it."

**Lestrade**

"Sir? Sir?" Lestrade awoke to a knocking at the door of his hotel room. It sounded like Donovan.

"Donovan? What time is it? Did I miss my alarm?" Lestrade sat up and turned sideways in bed, and set his feet on the floor. He thought his alarm had been properly set the night before; he always checked it before he went to sleep.

"I'm not sure, sir," she called through the door. "The power is out, and everyone's phones are off."

Lestrade felt his way over to the door and undid the security chain. He opened the door. "What's happened now, Donovan?" He flipped the lightswitch to the 'on' position and nothing happened. Lestrade squinted at the switch. He flipped it a couple more times, but that didn't make the lights turn on, either.

Donovan came in. "I'm not sure what's going on, sir. The power is out as far as we can see. No one's phones work, mobile or landline. No one's electronics work, and no one's cars will start."

"The cars won't start?"

"No, not at all. Anderson was going to go see about getting breakfast, and his car wouldn't start at all, wouldn't even make a noise when he turned the key. We talked the desk clerk into trying her car. Same situation."

Lestrade walked back to his nightstand and picked up his phone. It was completely black and wouldn't respond at all. "You don't know what time it is, then?"

"No, sir. I usually get up at five to go running, and I usually wake up before the alarm goes off, but my phone was already broken when I woke up this morning."

Lestrade ran his hand through his hair. "You don't have a torch?"

"They're both broken," Donovan said. "The batteries exploded."

Lestrade closed his eyes. "Right, I'll get dressed and meet you at your room. You're two down that way?"

"Yes, sir. 204."

"Go round up Anderson and we'll meet there in a couple minutes."

"Right, sir." Donovan looked uncertain as she went out into the hall and closed the door behind her.

Lestrade felt around until he got to the side of the curtains. He fumbled around until he figured out which way the dratted things opened. The early morning light didn't help much, but he could at least see his bag and his yesterday's suit in the closet. It was the strangest thing. He didn't think it was likely that anyone would've disconnected the battery on both the desk clerk's car and Anderson's car. Lestrade sat down to put on his socks. And with the cars not working and the power going out, this seemed to be a very unlikely coincidence. The International Police Peace Conference didn't seem to have attracted many protesters at all, but sabotage was certainly a possibility.

Lestrade was buttoning his shirt when an unsettling possibility started to develop in his mind. In one of the anti-terrorism classes he had attended, nuclear weapons were discussed. One of the effects of a nuclear bomb going off was an electromagnetic pulse that could knock out electronics. He didn't think a dirty bomb could do that, and surely if there had been a nuclear blast he would've felt it? Would someone have nuked London? Would they feel the effects at Coventry? He made sure his room key was in his pocket, and he headed over to Donovan's room.

Donovan answered the door. It was a little lighter in her room than it had been in Lestrade's. Anderson was sitting on the bed, fully dressed, eating some type of energy bar. It didn't look terribly appetizing.

"Would you like a bar, sir? I'm afraid there's no hot water for tea," Donovan said.

"And putting the tea bags in cold water isn't quite the thing," Anderson added.

"No, thank you," Lestrade said as he and Donovan took the two chairs in the room. "Donovan, do you remember that anti-terrorism class when they talked about nuclear weapons? Do you remember what they said about electromagnetic pulses?"

Donovan took a breath and looked down. She looked unsettled. "I believe they said all nuclear weapons give off EMP pulses, but the greatest effect would be from setting off the weapon while it was still in the air, as opposed to on the ground. But sir, wouldn't we have felt a nuclear explosion if it was anywhere near here?"

"I would've thought so, but this can't be coincidence. I think we should round up the other conference attendees and see what they know. The Glaswegians are across the hall from me, so I'll start with them. Donovan, you start this side of the hall, and Anderson, you start from the far end of the hall on my side, working towards me. Ask them all to meet down in the conference room in- er, as soon as they can."

Lestrade thought back to just after Christmas, when he had told his cheating wife that he hoped she'd die in a fire. He really hadn't meant it. He wondered if everyone in London had gone out that way. He didn't have time to concentrate on that now; he had things to do. Lestrade stood, ran his hand through his hair, and went out into the hall.

**John**

"I first took notice of Dr Collins when I passed him in a hallway at St Bart's," Sherlock said to John and Mrs Hudson as they walked. "He smelled like ethylene glycol, which is unusual for doctors. I was hoping he was a poisoner, but he had only been maintaining the backup generators at his house. Pity.

"Dr Collins is a fairly bright man, and he would've been the chair of medical physics rather than the assistant chair if he hadn't persisted in telling everyone to be prepared for the Russians to 'nuke' us. I thought he might be a useful person to know, and he wanted a few hundred kilos of potassium permanganate for his water treatment system and was unable to obtain it legally, so I introduced him to one of my contacts."

"Why couldn't he get it legally? Does he have a criminal record?" John asked.

"Oh, no. It's difficult for anyone to buy it. It's good for bombs."

"Sherlock! You've sold questionable characters bomb-making materials?"

"Not on that occasion, no."

Sherlock stopped in the intersection, right in the middle of the street. "Mrs Hudson, John, one moment." The other two stopped walking and faced him. "Dr Collins's house is down this street, where you can see those lines painted on the road. He won't kill us on sight because I did him a favour, but please don't speak, and do exactly what he and his associates tell you to do. No sudden moves. Follow me."

Dr Collins's house was in a typical residential neighborhood. The houses were all three or four stories, many of them brick. Several of the houses had trees in front of them, and all were bare except for a cherry at the corner that was just starting to bloom. It was a modern, straight street, with room for a car to park on each side, and more than enough room for one lane each way. A yellow half-circle was painted onto the asphalt in the street. It was centered around the doorway of one building, and the edge of the circle reached almost to the cars parked on the far side of the street from that house.

Sherlock, John and Mrs Hudson walked more slowly down the middle of the street. It hadn't been obvious from the intersection, but there were electric lights on in the house. As they neared the painted lines, a high voice shouted, "Dad!" Sherlock kept walking, but slowed even further, with John and Mrs Hudson following.

A public address system came online. "Stop where you are. Do not cross the yellow half-circle. Go stand in the white squares, one of you in each square. Do not leave the squares until you are told otherwise." John and Mrs Hudson looked to Sherlock, but Sherlock was already walking calmly and briskly towards the squares. John and Mrs Hudson hurried to catch up. The squares painted on the road were arrayed around the outside of the yellow line, away from the house, and the squares were far enough apart that anyone standing in them would be unable to reach his neighbour without leaving his own square.

The three of them faced the house. The announcer hadn't said anything about putting their hands in the air, so they didn't, although Mrs Hudson did have her hands up by her face. The front door of the house made a loud clank and then opened. Four people dressed in black came out. They were wearing balaclavas and each had an AK-47. There were an adult man, a woman, and two either very young men or older teenagers. "Eddie, stand further that way, don't bunch up, just like in the drill," the man said. One of the teenagers edged further away, but still remained on the side of the yellow line towards the house.

The man looked over John, Sherlock, and Mrs Hudson. He spent the most time considering John. Most people didn't think of John as very threatening; most people barely even saw him next to Sherlock. It was something to consider. The man turned his eyes to Sherlock. "Sherlock Holmes! I told you this would happen." He sounded rather pleased to have been proven right.

Sherlock looked a little irritated. "Yes, Dr Collins, you were right. An electromagnetic pulse has knocked out London. I give it about two and a half hours until the riots start. I have come to ask you for a favour."

"What favour?"

"I would like you to make me a device to start cars in exchange for jewelry."

"What kind of jewelry?"

"Four pair of modern gold cufflinks, a Georgian silver gorget, a Louis XV snuffbox, a Faberge picture frame, an early 1940s red Fiesta ware saucer-"

"I would like to see the saucer."

It was a very strange bargain that Sherlock and Dr Collins made, as far as John could see. Sherlock gave Dr Collins an old saucer and two pairs of cufflinks, and Dr Collins gave Sherlock a compressed air tank, a creme brulee torch, and some sort of fitting that was supposed to attach the tank to a car engine. Collins seemed to be rather an odd character. He was straight out of one of those programmes on the telly about survivalists or preppers or whatever they called themselves. Collins was heavily armed, and he appeared to be prepared to kill his fellow Londoners, but he had apparently only asked for what he thought fair in exchange for his technology.

After the bargain was struck, Collins and his party retreated into the house, and John, Sherlock, and Mrs Hudson had more than an hour to sit there, in full view of the house until Collins finished assembling everything. It was a long wait, sitting out in the street until Dr Collins came back out, and John didn't feel entirely comfortable that Dr Collins had looked him over so closely. It struck John as very odd that he hadn't seen any of the neighbours looking out their windows or walking down the street. He wondered if it they could still be asleep, or if Dr Collins had in some way caused them to stay indoors, either out of fear, or because of some bargain.

When Sherlock had got his car starting device, and the three of them were safely outside of the sight lines of the house, Sherlock told them they could speak again.

"Why would Collins want an old saucer?" asked John

"It's glazed with uranium oxide and will set off a Geiger counter. Physicists are mad for them. Some of the other colors of old Fiesta ware are radioactive, too, but they're not as popular as the red. I recall seeing a Volkswagen van back this way. It should be suitable for our purposes."

The three of them walked a short while until they reached a dark blue van. Sherlock walked right up to the driver's door and started picking the lock. "Sherlock!" John hissed, "Are you just stealing a car?"

Sherlock gave him a level look. "We'll bring it back after we get Lestrade. It's not doing the owner any good as it is. And the owner's such a drunk that everyone will be safer if he doesn't have a car. Look how he parked his vehicle! He's still lying on the floor of his hallway. And if you're just going to stand there, try to hold your neck as though Mrs Hudson were your mother."

John gritted his teeth. "And what way is that?"

"Tilt your chin down. Further. A little further. Lean your head left. Back a little. Yep."

John stood like that while Sherlock pulled the plastic casing off from underneath the steering wheel and pulled some wires loose. This was mad. Sherlock crawled through the middle of the van and opened the tailgate. He opened up the engine compartment and set the compressed air tank on one of the rear seats. "Mrs Hudson," Sherlock said, "please get in the car. John, you take the driver's seat."

Sherlock handed John an odd-looking car key and told him not to turn it until instructed. Sherlock returned to the engine compartment and started fiddling around with the creme brulee torch. "John, turn the key to the on position and release the parking brake."

There was a strange, growling bang, and then the engine turned over and started to run. Sherlock shut the tailgate and came around and got in. He flopped himself across the back seat as though it was the sofa at Baker Street.

"Coventry, then?" said John.

"Coventry."


	2. Well, Some of It Was True

If Necessary Alone

Chapter 2: Well, Some Of It Was True

**Lestrade**

The sun was setting on Coventry. Lestrade and his crew had spent the earlier part of the day talking to the other attendees at the police conference, and then they all went to talk with the Chief Constable of Coventry. The Chief Constable had agreed to let the Brits and the Irish attending the conference patrol on their own recognizance, but the delegates from other countries were only allowed to patrol with Coventry constables. It had been a hell of a day. The constables were absolutely back in the Dark Ages without radios or mobile phones and Lestrade had seen more people cry in one day than he had in a whole year on homicide.

From what Lestrade could gather, it didn't sound like a good situation. The power plant was severely damaged, and neither the water treatment plant nor the sewage treatment plant could run without electricity. No lights, no heat, no refrigeration. As soon as the clean water stored at the water treatment plant ran out, people would have to boil their water or treat it chemically. But electric stoves wouldn't run, and there was a limited amount of gas. And England wasn't known for its forests anymore. Maybe the weather would warm up early this year.

Lestrade and Donovan had gone out patrolling door-to-door with the other available officers to warn people about treating the water. Most people did have chlorine bleach or iodine in their homes, but it would only last so long. The amount of water already treated by the water plant certainly wasn't enough for everyone in Coventry to store even a few days' worth of water. The constables had also warned the householders about staying completely inside a building when it started raining, to avoid radioactive particles washed out of the sky by the rain. Of course this worried some of the householders, since the radioactive rainwater was likely to end up in their water supply.

Lestrade and Donvan had just had another crying woman close the door on them, and they headed down the front stairs into the road again. The woman of the house had asked if Donovan worked for the police too, despite Donovan's clearly displayed badge, and Donovan had kept a stiff upper lip about it. But since a dozen other people had asked the same exact thing over the course the day, she was looking a bit irritated. She was starting to clench her jaw in that way she had when she was just about to bite someone's head off. "It must be the jogging outfit," Donovan said, "I guess I'll just have to pack my dress uniform the next time I'm going to be stuck in Coventry!" Donovan stopped bitching and lifted her head. "Do you smell that?" she asked as they turned a corner. "Smells like a burning car."

"No, I don't smell anything," Lestrade answered. "I can't see the smoke. Is it still getting stronger in this direction?" Donovan definitely had a better sense of smell than he did. It seemed most women had better senses of smell than most men he knew.

Lestrade and Donovan picked up their pace as they walked back and forth, tracking down the source of the smell. After a few minutes, they could hear distant shouts and they headed towards the noise. As they got closer, the voices became clearer. These sounded like happy shouts and cheering, not panicked screaming and crying.

The two constables came around the corner and saw that a city bus in the middle of the street was on fire. There were about a dozen teenagers near it, some of them wearing bandannas over their faces. Most of the young people were standing around drinking and watching the fire, but a few were running around more actively, and hitting the bus with sticks or throwing things through the bus windows. Were these out-of-town troublemakers, or were they locals? Either way, something had to be done.

Lestrade and Donovan were definitely outnumbered, but most of these kids didn't look too tough. The teenagers' clothing was not overly professional, but most of them had their faces uncovered, and didn't look like especially malicious characters. It had been a few years since Lestrade and Donovan had had to deal with rioters, but the pair of them had a typical strategy for this sort of thing. Generally, Lestrade would draw the attention of the criminal, since the criminal would usually focus on him first anyway, leaving Donovan to circle around behind and get the jump on them. This kid attacking the bus didn't exactly look like a hardened criminal, and his friends all appeared to be the sort to retreat in the face of danger, but Lestrade kept his eyes moving, making sure none of the kids who were watching had decided to go on the offensive.

"Sir, please put that pipe down," Lestrade said loudly. Lestrade moved slowly to his left as Donovan moved away to her right. "I'm Detective Inspector Lestrade and I would like you to put down that pipe and stop damaging that bus." Most of the onlookers turned their heads towards Lestrade when he started talking, and suddenly remembered they had left their stoves on at home. One man, though, the one who was beating the side of the bus with a length of pipe, turned around and started walking towards Lestrade. He dragged the pipe along the ground in a menacing manner. By the sound of it, it was definitely a metal object. Two of the other young men present stood far away and yelled encouragement at him.

Donovan circled out away from Lestrade, so that it would be impossible for the man with the pipe to hit both of them at once. The young man seemed to ignore her. He tilted his head at Lestrade. "What's that, copper? I can't do what?"

Lestrade hadn't had someone pick a fight over a crime this petty in quite some time. Sort of a nice change from murderers, he supposed. The young man raised the pipe in both hands. "Sir," said Lestrade, to draw his attention, and then Donovan came up behind the young man and kicked his knee out of under him. He immediately dropped the pipe and started screaming bloody murder. It was always the most aggressive sorts that complained the loudest. Although, Donovan did kick pretty hard. Within seconds, Donovan had him face down and was handcuffing him. Lestrade stayed standing and kept an eye on their surroundings. The other two hooligans shouted one or two more insults and then ran off down the street. They didn't seem like the sort who would come back with their bigger, scarier friends, but you only had to be wrong once. Donovan said to the young man, "You are under arrest. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

The young man appeared to be attempting to spit on Lestrade and Donovan, but the bandanna over his face was making it difficult. Now getting him back to the station was going to be the hard part, depending how hard Donovan had kicked him. The lack of radios and cars was certainly making things difficult. Donovan had stood up, and she and Lestrade were discussing what to do about their prisoner, when Lestrade saw the two Glaswegian constables coming down the street in their direction.

Lestrade waved his hand as Boyd and MacDonald walked up. The kid who had been hitting the bus was still thrashing around on the ground and making an irritating amount of noise. Boyd said something to Lestrade, who responded, "Sorry?"

"Just a moment," Boyd said.

Boyd laid down flat on the ground so that he was looking the kid right in the eye, and he whispered something to him, which the other constables couldn't hear. The kid looked surprised, and went quiet and still. Boyd stood up and brushed himself off. He was smiling a bit while he did it, and the smile caused the scar which came up from the left corner of his mouth towards his ear to buckle in the most godawful way. This was probably why Lestrade hadn't seen him smile at all at the conference. Boyd continued with what he had been saying earlier, and it took Lestrade a second to tune back in.

"-kids at the University have offered us the use of a pedal bus, although not very many of them are offering to pedal."

"Sorry, pedal bus?"

"Yes. It has eight sets of gears so everyone on the bus pedals, and there's a driver in front who steers. There's also a place for a keg and a bartender, but I don't think they're offering us that, either. Supposedly the Fire Department has managed to find a horse-drawn engine, but they're short a few horses."

"Well," said Lestrade, "would you tell the Fire Department about this and round up some pedallers while Donovan and I watch the prisoner?"

Boyd and MacDonald agreed, and they headed off the way they came. Lestrade chuckled and shook his head as he looked at Donovan. "Blimey," he said, "That'll be one hell of a cub van."

**John**

It was about 150 kilometres from London to Coventry, but John, Sherlock and Mrs Hudson had only managed to cover about 50 km, a third of the way, before stopping for the night. Even though the electromagnetic pulse had hit in the very early morning, there were still enough cars stopped in the middle of the road to prevent John from driving in the same lane for any distance, and in some places there was enough of a blockage that they had to backtrack and detour onto another street to get around. Not many of the drivers of the stopped cars had stayed with their vehicles until the time John stopped for the evening, but he parked the van out in the middle of the motorway away from other cars, so it would be easier to see if anyone was approaching them. Mrs Hudson slept in the van, and John did the first watch, since he didn't trust Sherlock to wake him up at the right time.

It was so quiet out. Here John was, standing in the middle of the M1, with no other noise besides their van, and no lights except the sky. They were far enough from the sea that the sky had been clear at sunset, and the auroras from the solar activity were very apparent. Green tongues of flame stood all around the darker horizon like burning oil wells. The stars showed through them.

John, Sherlock and Mrs Hudson left the car running all night, and they refueled from somebody else's fuel tank when they changed watches. John felt a bit bad about doing that, but those people weren't using their fuel anyway. The sound of the engine would draw attention to them, and cover the sound of anyone approaching, but there might not be enough fuel in the creme brulee torch to restart the van from cold, especially in the March chill.

Mrs Hudson had surprised him again. When it came time to refuel the van the first time, Sherlock had seemed to think that John would automatically be the one siphoning the diesel fuel out of the other cars without even asking him if he wanted to do it. While they were still debating the subject, Mrs Hudson had got the blanket out of the back of the van, knelt down on it, set the bucket in place, and put the hose into the fuel tank.

When John noticed what she was doing, he dashed over and started to object. Mrs Hudson gave him a rather wry look as she put the hose to her mouth. "Really, dear," she said, "In this situation, I'm the professional."

When John awoke after their night camped out in the middle of the motorway, it appeared that the sun was close to rising, but it was somewhat difficult to tell with all the auroral activity. Sherlock was pacing back and forth outside the van, gesturing to himself, his hands passing through the visible puffs of his breath. John waited until the orange edge of the sun shone over the edge of the trees before waking Mrs Hudson. They had a cold breakfast and refueled the van again before heading on. John drove, Mrs Hudson sat in the front passenger seat, and Sherlock sprawled out across the back seat as before.

The sun was just above the horizon, and they had only driven a few kilometres when there was a flash of light, brighter than anything John had ever seen, and a gust of wind hit the car and made it wobble on the road. John heard Mrs Hudson yelp next to him. He held the steering wheel tightly. "Don't look back," Sherlock ordered. He sounded odd.

It took John a few seconds to get the van under control, and then he spared a glimpse to his left. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Mrs Hudson face forwards again and hold her hand over her mouth and nose. What had provoked that reaction? John looked in the rearview mirror anyway; he couldn't help himself. The car slowed as John inadvertently lifted his foot from the accelerator. "I said don't look back!" Sherlock said again. "You'll damage your eyes. Keep driving!" Now John knew why Sherlock had sounded so raspy and why Mrs Hudson had started crying. There was a mushroom cloud rising up from the surface of the earth behind them, in the direction of London. The towering cloud must have been many kilometres high. It was much more colorful than the films of nuclear explosions John had seen. It wasn't the washed-out white and orange of old films; there were swirls of red and purple in the cloud, as it rose up above London's 10 million people. John drove on.

**Lestrade**

The afternoon of the day after the power went out, there was some sort of commotion outside of the motel where the police attending the conference had been staying. Lestrade pitched the book he had been reading onto his bed and went out to the front entrance of the Blind Tailor Motor Inn. There was a dark blue van with its engine running, and a number of people had gathered around it. And there, right in the middle of it all was Sherlock, demanding to know where Lestrade was.

Lestrade pushed himself through the crowd. Leave it to Sherlock bloody Holmes to somehow hunt up a working automobile when no one else for miles around had one. What could possibly have warranted him driving all this way? John was there, too, next to Sherlock as always, and their landlady Mrs Hudson. She looked terrible.

The smile dropped off of Lestrade's face. Mrs Hudson clearly found Sherlock tolerable, so it probably wasn't the long car ride with him that had made her look like that. It was hard to tell what John was thinking from his expression, but Sherlock didn't look terribly well, either. "What's happened, Sherlock?" Lestrade said.

"Moriarty set off a nuclear bomb in London."

Lestrade kept looking at Sherlock, expecting him to say more. He wasn't making any sense. Something wasn't right about what Sherlock had said, but Lestrade couldn't decide what it was.

"When? Why are you here? How do you have a working car?"

Sherlock tilted his face towards the sky and closed his eyes as he took a deep breath. One of the Israeli constables spoke up. "Was this yesterday morning?"

"No," Sherlock said, "the electromagnetic pulse yesterday appears to have been a natural event. The bomb was set off this morning."

Lestrade thought Sherlock's words had begun to sink in. London had been nuked? How could that be real? Those weren't words that should have ever been said. There shouldn't have been a way to say that in English. There were millions of people in London. Millions.

"And you saw it? You can identify nuclear explosions?" the Israeli asked Sherlock.

"Yes."

The Israeli-_Cohen_, Lestrade thought-nodded sharply. The crowd had all gone silent.

Sherlock looked around and straightened his jacket, and then he walked up to Lestrade and shook his hand. They never greeted one another so formally. They looked at each other with tight faces. Sherlock was trying to keep his expression neutral, blank, but even he was failing at it. John shook hands with Anderson, and then Lestrade. John held his hand out towards Donovan, but she stepped forward and hugged him instead. Donovan let go of John, and past them, Lestrade could see Sherlock and Anderson shaking hands. _Must be the end of the world_, Lestrade started to think, and then it hit him. And then Donovan herself actually went and hugged Sherlock. Sherlock looked a little surprised, but he patted her on the back politely, if awkwardly. Then Mrs Hudson hugged Donovan, and Donovan started to cry in front of them all, a thing Lestrade had never seen her do in all their years working together. Mrs Hudson held Donovan and patted her hair.

After the news had spread through the motel, and a delegation had been sent to tell the Mayor and the Chief Constable the news, the chef at the motel had arranged for lunch for everyone there. The walk-in freezer was starting to thaw, and the owner of the motel had declared there was no sense in letting all that food go to waste. Lestrade had never heard of cooking pizza on a charcoal grill, but that's what the motel did. It smelled good, but Lestrade couldn't bring himself to eat more than a few bites. He did manage a beer, though.

Lestrade, Donovan, Anderson, John, and Mrs Hudson were eating or pretending to eat, all at one picnic table outside, and Sherlock had hidden himself away in one of the motel rooms, apparently to think. Lestrade thought maybe conversation might help a bit. Not much, but perhaps a bit. "Mrs Hudson, John, have either of you been to Coventry before?"

John shook his head. Mrs Hudson said, "I'm afraid I've only passed through on the train."

That was sort of a squib as conversation starters went. Lestrade took another sip of his beer. He said, "Wasn't that the _Coventry_ that was sunk in the Falklands war? You know, the one where the sailors all sang 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'?" Lestrade looked over at Donovan.

Donovan cleared her throat. "I couldn't say, sir. I hadn't had my first birthday yet." Lestrade was amused for a moment, and then he felt a bit ill as he wondered if he was the next oldest Londoner left alive after Mrs Hudson.

What had happened to everyone he knew? Gregson and Dimmock and Hopkins? Molly and Megan and Annie? Even the people he knew who had moved to other countries—what was happening over there?

How big was the bomb that had hit London? He had seen those maps on the internet of the projected damage from nuclear bombs detonating in various large cities, including London, but he couldn't remember how far the damage was supposed to reach for each size of bomb, and he couldn't bloody well look it up now.

Would whoever had done it go for the centre of town? He supposed the best target in London itself would be the Ministry of Defence, so surely anything near that would be absolutely gone. New Scotland Yard was only about a kilometre from the MI6 building, and St Bart's Hospital was maybe three or four kilometres from MI6. How could Sherlock know that it was Moriarty who had bombed London? Certainly, it looked as though the man had murdered a few people, but it was a bloody long way from turning a few individuals into involuntary suicide bombers, to using the sort of bomb that only sovereign states could manufacture.

"God," said Anderson, rapping his beer can on the table. "Even Hitler spared Paris! And the Americans spared Kyoto."

Lestrade looked up at Anderson's comment. Over Anderson's shoulder, he could see Sherlock, furtively sidling off towards the road. Lestrade almost missed him; he was wearing a dark gray hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans-a far cry from his usual suit. "Sherlock!" called Lestrade. "Where are you going?"

It wasn't unusual for Sherlock to ignore social events, but Jesus Christ, London was gone!

"Off to make friends." Sherlock turned and walked away across the parking lot.

Chapter title for first two chapters from "London Calling" by The Clash. Story title from a Winston Churchill speech.


End file.
